Parto 0: La Nesto. 02: La Konkurso

I couldn’t sleep that night. My thoughts were a tangled mess. The nightmare, Indigo, La Flugo. And Kanako’s words. I couldn't figure out what to tell them.

The first rays of dawn crept through the window, and I heard Kanako's voice, muffled at first, then growing clearer as they approached my door, Gabino's grumbling responses trailing behind. This time, I opened the door before they had the chance to knock.

“Good morning, Kanako, Gabino.”

“Oh! You’re already up!” Kanako grinned. “Big day today! It’s Konkurso time!”

They didn’t look affected by our chat from the day before. Maybe I was giving it too much importance.

“Perfect, perfect! We need to discuss strategy!” Kanako exclaimed, pulling me into the hallway.

“Strategy? Can I at least change clothes before we go out?” I said, freeing myself from their grip and returning to my room.

They both followed me inside, of course. I looked at them, hoping they’d take the hint and clear out, but Kanako was already bouncing on the edge of my bed.

With a sigh, I took my clothes and went inside the bathroom. The conversation continued through the door.

“We’ve been up for hours thinking about the strategy! Can you imagine if we won all the events?”

Gabino grunted. “I’m handling the obstacle course. So that’s a guaranteed win.”

The obstacle race was one of six events in La Konkurso, our bimonthly competition. It was mostly for bragging rights, though the winners did get small prizes. For Gabino, the bragging rights were the real prize.

“You have to! We need to win all six as a farewell present for Arakil!”

Over the past year, we had won at least three events every time. We could compete in any of all of them, but we each had our specialties.

“Let’s see, I’m obviously winning the puzzle challenge. This time I have a plan in case I make a stupid mistake,” said Kanako. “Medusa has won the last five rapid calculation challenges, so we also got that.”

“Will you two team up for the strategic challenge?” asked Gabino.

“We will,” said Medusa, also coming inside.

Okay, so my room was the de facto meeting room, noted.

“Do you even need to ask? We always dominate together,” sentenced Medusa.

Before, I was on Kanako’s team and we never won, but almost two years ago, Indigo asked me to join them and Medusa took my place with Kanako.

“Good, good! And Arakil hasn’t lost even a single time on the memory matrix. Yes, we got this,” said Kanako.

Gabino’s shoulders stiffened, and Medusa shot me a worried glance. Kanako, unaware, ticked off the events on their fingers. One, two, three, four, five…

That left one event. Along with the obstacle course, it was Gabino’s forte. They had snagged a couple of obstacle course victories, but Daidek from Ĉelo Tri was the undisputed champion. The precision challenge, though… that was a different story. We never talked about the precision challenge, because even on Gabino’s best days, Daidek would always crush them.

“Don't forget about the precision challenge!” Said Kanako.

When there was something we never talked about, it didn’t include Kanako.

“You go and try to win that thing,” started Gabino. “See how Daidek cheats on you, like always. And then they will say they’re not cheating, you’re just bad at it. Maybe next time, Gabino, or maybe not. Hahaha, such a funny guy this Daidek the Non-Cheater. Well, Daidek can have their little game. I’ll be busy winning the obstacle course, and we’ll see what they say then.”

“All right, then. Five out of six events! Good enough, right, Arakil?” Kanako asked with a smile.

And so, with Gabino still muttering about Daidek, we headed to La Kerno for the start of La Konkurso.

I tried my best to push my worries aside and help Serena cheer on Kanako when they lost all of their advantage because they forgot a minus sign. They ended up winning.

I then won the memory matrix against just two kids, since everyone else had grown tired of losing it. I almost felt guilty accepting the small wooden token for first place. It felt like cheating, since for me, the patterns arranged themselves in my mind. I never had to practice, unlike the others. It was going to become a much more interesting event next time, without me.

I didn’t want to be there. I couldn’t be there. It was Gabino’s turn, but I was at my limit. I wasn’t paying attention, and I would just have distracted them. A wave of nausea rolled through me. I needed air, space, silence.

I slipped away, unnoticed, heading towards the forest area. The familiar path offering me comfort, a sense of routine in the chaos of my thoughts. Water called to me, a constant, soothing murmur.

The stream emerged from a thick metal pipe embedded on the wall of La Nesto. I jumped over the water, intending to follow the wall like I had done many times, but my foot slipped on a patch of wet moss. I landed hard on my butt, a jolt of pain shooting up my spine.

That’s when I saw it.

A glint of light caught my eye, reflecting off something nestled amongst the roots of a nearby tree. I pushed myself up and went to investigate. It was a tiny metallic hexagram shoved into a piece of wood, smooth and worn, half-buried in the dirt. As I brushed away the clinging mud, I saw the engravings.

Vento ne sonas, silento portas mesaĝon.
Pensu kiel papili, PROFUNDA maro kaŝas.
SES×SES
-Kimiti

“Wind doesn’t sound, silence carries a message.
Think like a butterfly, a DEEP sea hides.
SIX×SIX
-Kimiti”

My heart pounded in my chest. It wasn’t just a random piece of wood. It was a message. A message. From Kimiti. Whoever that was. My fingers traced the carved words, the rough texture of the wood grounding me in reality.

The world seemed to tilt, the sounds of La Konkurso fading into a distant hum. I read it again, trying to solve the riddle.

If wind didn’t sound, and silence carried a message, it could mean the wind carried the message. That seemed reasonable. What could the wind be? “Think like a butterfly.” A butterfly is light. The wind would carry it, wouldn’t it?

And then there was the “DEEP” sea. There was no sea in La Nesto. We’d only seen images of it in lessons. Vast expanses of blue, a world unrelated to our own. Why was “deep” capitalized? And “SIX×SIX”… was that a location? A date?

I clutched the wooden piece tighter, my knuckles white. This was it. This was the answer I’d been searching for, even if I didn’t know the question. It was a message, an actual message, not just another of my nightmares.

“Arakil! There you are!” Gabino’s voice shattered the silence. I shoved the wooden piece into my pocket.

They looked at me, frowning. “What happened to you? You’re covered in mud.” Then, they seemed to remember the reason they were looking for me, and their usual grin returned. “I won the obstacle course!”

“Well done!” I managed, forcing a smile. I didn’t want them to ask me what I was doing there, or why was my butt muddy, or what did I have in my pocket. So I said the first thing that came to mind. “What about the precision challenge?”

Gabino kept talking about how Daidek was a cheater all the way back, throughout dinner, and they were still complaining when I closed the door of my room, inside Ĉelo Kvar.

I wasn’t listening, though. I had only one night left, and no amount of searching would conjure a deep sea inside La Nesto.